Letters

James Purnell and the rebuilding of democracy

Those, like James Purnell, seeing some hope for the left in Saul Alinsky's models of community organisation should be careful – the line between the community and the mob is fine (James Purnell stands down as MP to follow grassroots calling, 20 February). Early in his career Alinsky surely was the radical community organiser who saw a need for communities to unite with organised labour to fight corporate oppression in Chicago. But the Back of the Yards neighbourhood committee he helped found later became segregationist, fighting to keep African-Americans out of Polish-­American neighbourhoods, to Alinsky's dismay.

Grassroots populism is not automat­ically progressive. When Sarah Palin thinks she has the right to call for "a revolution" in the US at a rally of the Tea Party movement (community organisations, folks) having just lost an election, and when MPs are held in such low esteem here, the immediate challenge is surely to work for and rebuild the legitimacy of electoral democracy, around the hard-won rights of one-person-one-vote and the secret ballot, and of representation, transparency and accountability. Rather than just turn to community organising, we should simultaneously fight to renew our formal democratic processes. How about, for example, a majority quota of "local only" shortlists, so constituencies like Purnell's might more often see one of their own sons or daughters at the cabinet table, making a more direct connection between community and democracy?

Bill Cooke

Lancaster

• At 39, James Purnell is leaving the Commons to become a community worker. At the same age, I left a university chair to follow the same occupation. 34 years later, having lived and worked in two deprived areas. I have no regrets.

By contrast, Clem Attlee undertook community/youth work before he entered parliament. Today the Labour party is dominated by middle-class MPs with little understanding of working-class culture. The party should not select candidates whose background is just university followed by thinktanks, research and other sheltered jobs. We need MPs whose upbringing or jobs gives them understanding of life at the hard end.

Bob Holman

Glasgow

• You say James Purnell is "a man with ideas" and "a reforming welfare secretary" (Editorial, 20 February). Your leader of 29 February 2008 (Welfare reform: Worrying words) was less enthusiastic. Why the change of tone? Before his resignation from the government, Purnell had pushed through controversial changes to the benefits system with gusto. He continued with his "reforms" irrespective of the recession and sharply rising unemployment. Yet to my knowledge, he has had little to say about the transgressions of the financial manipulators who brought the economy to the abyss.